climate emergency

Mirko Nikolic, Editor, et. al. - Yes to Life, No to Mining, September 2021

This report from Yes to Life, No to Mining Network (YLNM) explores how and why many nations – and the mining industry – are re-framing mining as a solution to climate change in order to facilitate domestic extraction of so-called ‘strategic’, ‘critical’ and ‘transition’ minerals required for renewable energy, military and digital technologies. 

Finnish, Norwegian and Swedish authorities have granted concessions for tens of thousands of hectares of land, with mining pressure increasing particularly dramatically in Sápmi – the home territory of the Indigenous Sámi Peoples. 

YLNM’s new research examines state and corporate claims that mining in Europe represents a gold standard of regulation and corporate practice that justifies creating new mining sacrifice zones in the name of climate action.

Without exception, the authors – in all nations – report a vast gap between this rhetoric and the realities of mining at Europe’s new extractive frontiers, highlighting systemic rights violations and ecological harm.

Read the text (PDF).

By Simon Pirani - Truthout, August 29, 2021

In the run-up to the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in the U.K. in November — the 26th session of the talks that were launched in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 — the governments of the world’s richest countries are making ever-louder claims that they are effectively confronting global warming. Nothing could be more dangerous than for social, labor and environmental movements to take this rhetoric at face value and assume that political leaders have the situation under control.

There are three huge falsehoods running through these leaders’ narratives: that rich nations are supporting their poorer counterparts; that “net zero” targets will do what is needed; and that technology-focused “green growth” is the way to decarbonize.

First, wealthier countries claim to be supporting poorer nations — which are contributing least to global warming, and suffering most from its effects — to make the transition away from fossil fuels.

But at the G7 summit in June, the rich countries again failed to keep their own promise, made more than a decade ago, to provide $100 billion per year in climate finance for developing countries. Of the $60 billion per year they have actually come up with, more than half is bogus: analysis by Oxfam has shown that it is mostly loans and non-concessional finance, and that the amounts are often overstated.

Compare this degrading treatment of the Global South with the mobilization of many hundreds of billions for the post-pandemic recovery. Of $657 billion (public money alone) pledged by G20 nations to energy-producing or energy-consuming projects, $296 billion supports fossil fuels, nearly a third greater than the amount supporting clean energy ($228 billion).

Meanwhile, the impacts of climate change are magnified by poverty. This year’s floods, wildfires and record temperatures in Europe and North America have been frightful enough. The same phenomena cause far greater devastation outside the Global North.

In 2020, “very extensive” flooding caused deaths, significant displacement of populations and further impacts from disease in 16 African countries, the World Meteorological Organization’s (WMO’s) annual climate report recorded. India, China and parts of Southeast Asia suffered from record-breaking rainfall and flooding, too.

By Elizabeth Perry - Work and Climate Change Report, August 25, 2021

Most Canadians experienced global heating directly this summer – and in British Columbia, the chief coroner attributed 570 of the 815 sudden deaths during the June extreme heat event to the record-breaking temperatures, as reported by the CBC. “July 2021 was Earth’s hottest month ever recorded, NOAA finds” (Washington Post, Aug. 13) states that the combined land and ocean-surface temperature in July was 1.67 degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th-century average, with North America 2.77 F above average. The IPCC Report released in August includes long-term temperature trends in its overview of the physical impacts of climate change, and makes dire forecasts for the future.

Health, earnings, and environmental justice

Two new medical articles on the theme of heat and health appeared in the prestigious journal The Lancet, and are summarized in “Extreme heat-caused deaths have jumped 74% in the last 30 years” in Axios in August.

Examining the economic impacts on workers, in mid-August the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) released Too hot to work: Assessing the Threats Climate Change Poses to Outdoor Workers. The UCS report is summarized in “If we ignore climate change, it will be hell on outdoor workers” in HuffPost, re-posted by the National Observer on August 24. One of its unique findings: a forecast that between now and 2065, (assuming no action to reduce global emissions), the exposure to hazardous levels of heat will quadruple, resulting in a potential loss of 10 percent or more of earnings annually for more than 7.1 million US workers. Economy-wide, this translates into up to $55.4 billion of earnings at risk annually. In Health Costs of Climate Change , published by the Canadian Institute for Climate Choices published in June 2021, the estimate for Canada was that the labour productivity impact of higher temperatures is projected as “a loss of 128 million work hours annually by the end of century—the equivalent of 62,000 full-time equivalent workers, at a cost of almost $15 billion.”

Too Hot to Work counts farm labourers and construction workers, but also truck drivers, delivery and postal workers, firefighters, police, and forestry workers as outdoor workers. Given that Black/African American and Hispanic/Latino workers disproportionately comprise many U.S. outdoor occupations, the report highlights the environmental justice aspects of extreme heat . This environmental justice aspect has been described anecdotally by many articles over the summer – notably, in the poignant text and photos of “Postcard From Thermal: Surviving the Climate Gap in Eastern Coachella Valley” (ProPublica, Aug. 17) , which contrasts the living conditions of the wealthy in California, living relatively unaffected, and the real suffering of the mainly immigrant workers who live close by and work on the farms and as service workers.

By Brian Tokar - Institute for Social Ecology, August 19, 2021

This analysis by ISE board and faculty member Brian Tokar has also appeared on Counterpunch, Climate and Capitalism, Monthly Review Online, ZNet and Green Social Thought:

The UN-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recently released its latest comprehensive report on the state of the earth’s climate. The much-anticipated report dominated the headlines for a few days in early August, then quickly disappeared amidst the latest news from Afghanistan, the fourth wave of Covid-19 infections in the US, and all the latest political rumblings. The report is vast and comprehensive in its scope, and is worthy of more focused attention outside of specialist scientific circles than it has received thus far.

The report affirms much of what we already knew about the state of the global climate, but does so with considerably more clarity and precision than earlier reports. It removes several elements of uncertainty from the climate picture, including some that have wrongly served to reassure powerful interests and the wider public that things may not be as bad as we thought. The IPCC’s latest conclusions reinforce and significantly strengthen all the most urgent warnings that have emerged from the past 30 to 40 years of climate science. It deserves to be understood much more fully than most media outlets have let on, both for what it says, and also what it doesn’t say about the future of the climate and its prospects for the integrity of all life on earth.

First some background. Since 1990, the IPCC has released a series of comprehensive assessments of the state of the earth’s climate, typically every 5 – 6 years. The reports have hundreds of authors, run for many hundreds of pages (this one has over 3000), and represent the international scientific consensus that has emerged from the period since the prior report. Instead of releasing a comprehensive report in 2019, as originally scheduled, the IPCC followed a mandate from the UN to issue three special reports: on the implications of warming above 1.5 degrees (all temperatures here are in Celsius except where otherwise noted), and on the particular implications of climate change for the earth’s lands and oceans. Thus the sixth comprehensive Assessment Report (dubbed AR6) is being released during 2021-22 instead of two years prior. Also the report released last week only presents the work of the first IPCC working group (WGI), focused on the physical science of climate change. The other two reports, on climate impacts (including implications for health, agriculture, forests, biodiversity, etc.) and on climate mitigation – including proposed policy measures – are scheduled for release next February and March, respectively. While the basic science report typically receives far more press coverage, the second report on climate impacts and vulnerabilities is often the most revealing, describing in detail how both ecosystems and human communities will experience the impacts of climate changes.

Robert Pollin interviewed by Paul Jay - The Analysis News, August 4, 2021

By Staff - Fire Brigades Union, August 10, 2021

The FBU has joined the chorus of alarm at the UN’s latest climate report. Published yesterday, the report is the world’s largest ever report into climate change.

It concludes that within the next two decades, temperatures are likely to rise by more than the vital 1.5C limit, bringing widespread devastation and extreme weather. According to the report only “immediate, rapid and large-scale reductions in emissions” can prevent such breakdown.

Fire Brigades Union general secretary Matt Wrack said:

“Firefighters here and across the world are on the front line of the climate crisis. We see the effects of climate change every time we fight wildfires and save people from floods, and we will fight as hard as we can for politicians to wake up and take notice. As a humanitarian service we cannot stand by and watch this happen.

”This report confirms that human activity is responsible for climate change and we are running out of time to save ourselves. But this requires fundamental political, social and economic change across the world, and those in power have, so far, failed in the face of this immense challenge.

“It also tallies closely with what firefighters across the world experience on a daily basis: a planet rapidly breaking down. Now, we have a view of the bigger picture – that humanity has a final chance to act before huge devastation occurs.”

The report states that we have already caused 1C of heating, close to the 1.5C danger limit agreed in the Paris climate deal and emphasised as a red line in a 2018 UN report. If emissions don’t fall in the next couple of decades then according to the report temperatures will rise by 3C, and if they don’t fall at all temperatures will rise by 4-5C. The latter has been described as “apocalypse territory”.

It states that every corner of the planet is already being affected and it could get far worse if the remaining slim chance to stop heating over 1.5C is not immediately grasped.

As well as making clear the damage that climate change is doing and will do to the planet, the report makes it clear that the climate crisis is unequivocally caused by human activities.

The 42 page summary of the report has been agreed, line-by-line, by every government on the planet.

By Umair Irfan - Vox, July 21, 2021

Abe Carlin held up an instant-read thermometer in the Portland, Oregon, pizzeria where they worked. It showed 103.2 degrees Fahrenheit. Even with half the ovens off and the air conditioning cranked up, the kitchen was desperately hot on June 27, when a heat dome capped the region.

Outside, temperatures were breaking records as a searing late-June heat wave settled across the Pacific Northwest. Portland reached a record high of 112 degrees Fahrenheit, only to be broken the next day. Portlanders, who have rarely felt such heat, didn’t want to turn on the ovens in their own homes.

So as temperatures started rising, more orders came into the pizzeria. The kitchen staff struggled to keep up with the demand using their limited oven space. And staffers who would have helped out couldn’t make it in as cables melted in Portland’s light rail system and left commuters stranded.

Conditions in Carlin’s pizza restaurant were actually better than many in the food industry. Employees were rotated between the cooler dining room and the warmer kitchen. The break room was stocked with cold Gatorade. Workers were told to take frequent breaks and even spend a few minutes in the cooler if needed.

Finally, the owners decided to close the restaurant early.

“Fundamentally, the way that our space was set up was not able to deal with heat,” Carlin said. “Our HVAC system is not meant to handle this.”

Workers at other Portland restaurants were not so lucky. Some closed early while others tried to stay open as long as possible. The heat triggered power outages that shut down air conditioners and coolers in several restaurants, and employees reported symptoms of heat exhaustion. Workers at Voodoo Doughnuts in Portland’s Old Town went on strike because of the heat. The striking workers were then fired.

By Luis Feliz Leon - Labor Notes, July 15, 2021

Fleeing is what the rich do best. Republican Sen. Ted Cruz fled Texas last winter, abandoning millions to freezing temperatures. But some have tired of the Earth altogether.

Billionaires Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Richard Branson are fleeing to space on rockets with stratospheric price tags.

Branson was the first to venture forth July 11, in a gambit to launch a commercial space tourism industry—as if we didn’t have enough trouble with the carbon emissions from excess tourism.

That’s what it means to be ultra-rich—to squander oodles of untaxed cash and rake in public subsidies on boyhood fantasies of “space hotels, amusement parks, yachts, and colonies,” as Bezos put it in high school.

But the billionaires playing space cowboys aren’t like the rest of us. They’re on the other side of the fault line of an accelerating climate catastrophe caused by greenhouse emissions.

Workers who plow fields, erect scaffolding, haul garbage, lay track, and stuff mail are not going to escape onboard a winged rocket. We are going to have to fight to survive on Earth.